My audio bredren De la Mancha, programmer of synthesizers and digital music/art, has released a Commodore 64 inspired synthesizer for use with your VST compatible frame (pro tools, live, logic) though, unfortunately, DLM’s plugins only work on Windows machines. From the site:

basic64 is inspired by the 8 bit sounds of the classic Commodore 64.
It’s not a straight emulation, but is based around the SID chip with some extras for that 8-bit retro game sound, lofi gritty noises or just plain oddness

Like all true R0b0tninja, I respectfully acknowledge the works of supreme instrument creators such as De La Mancha. Some use Reaktor, some take this more direct approach, but all must inevitably answer to the Supreme Ninja-master in the sky. R0b0tninja blasters set to annihilate.

As you may know, one of the many advantages of being a robotic ninja, is that travelling through deep space poses no real threat to our livelihood. While your flesh-and-blood ninja has to rely on various ninja-magics and/or ninja-spacecraft, we robotninjas can survive even the raw vacuum of outer space, giving us the freedoms to explore vast reaches of the solar system and beyond. At a colleague’s post at NASA, please find several examples of the field recordings I made while in orbit around Saturn. On a routine expedition to Jupiter, investigating an orbiting artifact placed there millions of years ago by advanced, god-like superbeings (turns out it was full of stars), I happened to pick up some interesting sounds on my various antennae while passing by Saturn. Intrigued, I beamed the samples back to earth, and my good friends at the National Astronomical Super Atomics have posted them for the world to experience. End ninja-transmission—-dictated but not read.

R0b0tr0n offers exciting new careers in such fields as: multi-dimensional bomb- droppery, advanced turbonics, logistical metaphysics and diamond robotics. Come see which robots are right for you! Act now

Eidos, maker of such classic games as Tomb Raider and a few others, has developed Traxxpad, a mixing and sampling software/game that allows beginning beat-smiths and seasoned beat-masterdragons alike to mix beats in the comfort of their train-station, automobile and aeroplane dimensions.

Considerably less powerful than a laptop but far more powerful than a cell-phone, using the Psp as an audio production machine both interests and enrages your usually agreeable R0b0tninja, for reasons that I will soon describe.

Technology has always been a mainstay of music production: the first pianos, organs, harpsichords, and drums, were all pieces of high technology at their time. Intense dedication was required from the individual to transform these intimidating and complex machines into instruments of beauty and creation. This PSP sound system, therefore, represents a powerful, portable and accessible instrument that allows the common lay-ninja to create on similar levels to that of a R0b0tninja warl0rd. This pleases me, but it also fills me with a murderous rage that can only be quenched by spilling countless gallons of the blood of mine enemies.

For it also stands at the nadir of a trend of musical dumbening, pioneered by sony with its playstation title MTV’s music generator. Guitar hero, parappa the rapper—-these are the classic, you-can-do-it-too, douchebaggy games we all know and love, that allow anyone with 50 dorra to make what amounts to awful cartoon rap and classic rock. What the music generator and Traxxpad do is extract the you-can-do-it concept from the goofy, classic video-game modality, and create a soulless, musically deadening synthesis of edutainment and homogenous culture.

A stripped-down music production tool that lets average users ‘create’ beats using pre-selected samples and auto-quantized rhythms, Traxxpad lets you step-up to the genius-level status of the last 10 years of pop music with ease (although, I do think it’s cool that you can record using the psp mic and import your own loops with a memory stick…). I still have trouble accepting producers who only use samples and pass it off as their own–whatever happened to self-mastery? Now is the time, my ninjas, to bring it back to the skills.

Who wan tes. As Iman would say, praise be to the most high in all him forms and works. Blessed is Iman robot, who would help H.I.M. bredren to behold Jah glory, decapitate baldhead vampire, and who in him breath, make babylon tower fall. Blessings be to Iman ninja who, by Jah mercy, slay the seven-head beast with him hand, and teach overstanding to lost I-dren along the Way. Jah Bless.

Myninjas, when I attempt to describe the ninja-blasting potential of different synthesizers to you (in these posts, and in the greater soundscape), I can only offer you different aspects of certain instruments, midi structures and samplers that people like Ableton and Propellerhead have taken the time to create.

That being said, for the more esoteric ninja for whom the current synthetic lexicon is never vast enough, Native Instruments Reaktor 5 allows the discriminating r0b0tninja to forge his own weapons of mass destruction and distribute them worldwide in the online Reaktor 5 user library. Good luck battling the US military, although as a r0b0tic ninja you probably have more important things to worry about…

The Reaktor core is unlike anything else. While several audio applications can mangle audio into feedback loops, leading to chain reactions of deafening proportions, inside the Reaktor, highly unstable elements can be multiplied together exponentially. Different levels of macrocosmic and cellular elements can be combined to form instruments, the user able to arrange and assign knobs and sliders to any of the endlessly customizable inner connections. Combine that with its ability to be used as a VST (virtual instrument) inside Live or Logic or whatever, and you begin to understand the pure nature of its sonic potential; as in life, the uninitiated will risk certain deafness, while the pr0b0t faces only the risks of being def.

That’s right, my most illustrious ninjas–the pro-status DAW used by countless studios, post-production firms and sound designers is back for more. This latest version features a new space-time compressor (elastic time), heightened compatibility with the AVID video editor, and (most impressively to this robot/ninja), the AVID satellite option, which allows you to use a separate, dedicated computer to house your non-audio media files. Several billion man-hours are wasted every day by those seeking to peep their exported movies (with sound)–this option allows one to preview said movies in full form without the hassle of exporting them to disk.

Now, while several of these features are brand new to Protools users, allow me to take this opportunity to point out that both the elastic time feature and the ability to preview movie files with sound have both been available to LIVE users as of version 6. This satellite feature, however, does promise to take the strain off of your computer’s processor (assuming you have another, dedicated, computer on the side), and I will not lie: the R0b0tninja seethes with poisonous jealousy at those who can afford such a powerful and expansive set-up. My non-robotic eyeball boils in consternation.

Reason 4 is out now myninjas–and you know what kind of mythological beasts it employs in its everyday workings. Combined with a new arpeggiator, groove module, and midi sequencer, Reason 4 promises to elevate minds, educate the children and motivate the masses. All hyperbole aside, humanity may have just given birth to yet another tool that could ultimately lead to its destruction, like artificial intelligence or the military industrial complex. R0b0tninjas worldwide unite–only through self-mastery and enhanced understandings of Reason will light burn through the darkness and the balance of the universe be maintained. As I would say.

R0b0tr0n offers exciting new careers in such fields as: multi-dimensional bomb- droppery, advanced turbonics, logistical metaphysics and diamond robotics. Come see which robots are right for you! Act now